Indicate that your married in your tax return if your spouse hasn't arrived yet

[mart]

Hi everyone! I need help and recommendations if I need to indicate that I'm married or not in my tax return for the year 2013 even if my wife hasn't arrived yet here in Canada.

My wife and I got married on December 26, 2012. Last year March 2013 when I filed my 2012 tax return, I indicated that I'm not married thinking that I haven't started sponsoring my wife yet and there was only 5 days in 2012 that we've been married. I submitted my tax return and everything went well.

Last year September 2013, I applied in CIC to sponsor my wife here in Canada and still waiting for my wife's visa office to respond up to now.

My question is if I should indicate that I'm married on my tax return even if my wife has not arrived here in Canada yet? Because it doesn't ask in the tax return software if my spouse is here in Canada. Moreover, I could not enter a sin number and any amount coming from an employer which generates errors to the software.

So far I've been getting errors in my tax return software and I consider to seek here in the forums for advice first before asking a tax return agent which would cost a bit.

Thank you everyone in advance for any help you may give. I'm pretty sure my question would also be beneficial for sponsors filing a tax return this month. Cheers!

 

[mikeymyke]

I have same issue, you should change your marital status right away, make it effective the date you were officially married. Even she not a PR yet, you are entitled to the spouse basic exemption tax credit, provided you show you are supporting your wife financially, as long as she doesn't earn more than $16,000 or whatever the spouse basic exemption is, that's pretty cool. I talked with a tax expert about this.

 

[truesmile]

Yes, you should indicate so. Can you not enter 9 zeroes i.e. 000-000-000 for your spouse's SIN?? I was able to "start" a return with that using TurboTax, (but I'm not in a position to go through a whole mock return). And also in my software you can choose to "Ignore" errors that you know are 'Not Applicable'.

 

[Rob_TO]

My wife and I got married on December 26, 2012. Last year March 2013 when I filed my 2012 tax return, I indicated that I'm not married thinking that I haven't started sponsoring my wife yet and there was only 5 days in 2012 that we've been married. I submitted my tax return and everything went well.

Last year September 2013, I applied in CIC to sponsor my wife here in Canada and still waiting for my wife's visa office to respond up to now.

When you filed your taxes as "single" for 2012 tax year, you have actually committed tax fraud! You were supposed to file as "married", even though your wife doesn't live in Canada.

What you need to do first, is an amendment to your 2012 taxes to file the correct way. CRA should ask for your wife's world income she earned in her home country, and this will be used to determine your family income. If you claim her as dependent and can show you were supporting her, then you may actually get a further refund from 2012.

You should call the help line of whatever software you are doing for taxes, and ask how to indicate a spouse with no SIN.

Also if you submitted your 2012 Option C printout that shows "single" status, even though you were married in 2012... that might be strange to the visa officer reviewing her file.